104 
A KITCHEN GARDEN 
method is now only practiced to save labor in small 
gardens and to bring a few onions in for use early in 
the season. 
To raise a satisfactory crop the ground must be 
free from weed seeds; it must be made as rich as 
possible and have constant cultivation from the time 
the seedlings break through the ground until the 
bulbs begin to ripen. The soil must be -plowed, 
harrowed and raked, until it is in the finest possible 
condition to receive the seed, and it is important to 
select a plot for this purpose that has been kept free 
from weeds the preceding season. Root crops are 
the best to precede onions, as they not only leave the 
ground free from litter, but also, if they have been 
properly cultivated, leave the soil in fine tilth. 
In our kitchen garden I would sow the seed in 
drills, twelve to fourteen inches apart, and cultivate 
with the wheel hoe; in field culture, or raised more 
extensively in the garden, plant in rows as closely as 
they can be worked with the cultivator, which, if it 
is provided with very narrow-bladed teeth, can be 
run through any rows where the horse can walk. 
For the kitchen garden, make the surface fine with a 
sharp steel rake, and if no drill is at hand, take a 
rake handle or blunt stick, and, drawing it along the 
garden line, scratch a drill about an inch deep. Sow 
the seed thinly, say an inch apart, but if there is 
reason to doubt the freshness of the seed, sow it 
thicker, so that a good stand may be assured. When 
the onions are an inch high, they should have their 
first working. Follow the wheel hoe or cultivator 
with a narrow-bladed hoe, not wider than an inch 
